Interesting Facts and Figures About Women in Spain

Today is the International Women´s Day (IWD) and from “Spain Market Research” we want to celebrate it. We would like to share the long way that Spanish women faced during the last century and some achievements that they have reached recently.

In the 1920s, Spanish women won the right of getting their own salary (without their husband intermediation), and in 1931 they got the same rights as men. But later, due to Franco dictatorship, they lost all these rights for almost 50 years, until 1978. In 1978 the Constitution established that men and women have the same rights.

In the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap 2016 report, which ranks 144 countries on their ability to close the gender gap in four key areas: health and survival, education, politics and economic equality, Spain holds the #29 position. The main reasons are the poor economic participation and opportunity, and the lack of political empowerment.

Fortunately, the situation for women in Spain has been improving over the last century, although still some work is needed:

Employment: women represent 45% of the labor force. In total there are 18.09 million workers and from them, 8,23 million are women.

Part-time: In Spain, there are 2,84 million part-time jobs, and 2,05 are held by women. They represent 72.4% of the total since they need time for their family.

Education. Women are more well-educated than men. Almost 52% of working women have higher education. In the 1920s, 5 out of 10 women were analphabets.

There are fewer women executives than in the EU. Despite the fact that women workers are more educated, the fact is that in Spain the percentage of women executives is below than the European average. Female representation on boards of directors of Spanish companies reached 31% in 2014, compared to 33% on average in the EU.

Woman salaries are 19% smaller than the men ones. On average, a woman gets 18.8% less per hour in Spain than a man, -the wage gap in Europe is 16.2%-. So women would have to work 70 days a year more than men in order to receive the same salary doing the same job.

They take work home. Seven out of ten working women say they take work home. Specifically, 14% say they work at home after hours on a continuous basis and 56% do so sporadically. In addition, 57% said they check their professional phone every day – including weekends – checking the email and picking up calls.

Savings. Men and women have different goals of savings. While women are more focused on the housing and family, men are more focused on cars, motorcycle, and electronic products.

They have a reduced role in investment. In Spain, only 25% of investment funds are managed by women. In addition, their investor profile is very different: they not only put the education of their children before retirement or financial independence, but also take more time to decide on their investments.

There are only five ‘super rich’ women in the top 20, and even in this ranking women have a reduced representation. The five women are Sandra Ortega, the daughter of Amancio Ortega -founder of Inditex-; Hortensia Herrero, the wife of Juan Roig -president of Mercadona-; The businesswoman Alicia Koplowitz; Helena Revoredo, president of Prosegur, and Maria del Pino, sister of Rafael del Pino.